China: Internet porn has “perverted China’s young minds”

The Chinese government has announced a six-month program intended to remove …

After announcing a crackdown on online gaming by minors and introducing a plan to clean up television shows like Happy Boys Voice, the Chinese government has now embarked on a broader plan to scour porn from the Internet. And this is more than a "block a few web sites" scouring—it's the full-blown, put-your-whole-body-into-it abrasive scrubdown. Just ask Chen Hui, one-time operator of the largest porn site in China. After his arrest late last year, Chen was sentenced to life in prison.

Xinhua, the official Chinese news agency, has a public mission statement that includes "unswervingly uphold[ing] correct guidance to public opinion." It dutifully publicizes these sorts of initiatives and often follows up with reports a day or two later that stress how well the plan is working. This was the case with the video game crackdown, in which gaming companies went on record the day after it was announced to explain how happy they were that the government had instituted the program.

In the case of the new Internet clean-up, the follow-up story appeared today and stressed the success of recent government crackdowns on Internet activity, including pornography and fraud. The strangest case is a blackmail scenario in which a man used naked pictures of a woman to request a fistful of yuan; she contacted the police instead. Xinhua describes it this way: "A man named Wang in Yichang City of Hubei Province had a no-clothes chat with a woman on the internet during which he took photos of his naked companion, and afterwards sent her the photos in order to extort money from her." The man, who has since been arrested, is currently awaiting trial.

As the various police reports make clear, the "initiative" isn't new at all, though it looks like the Ministry of Public Security plans to step up Internet operations for the next six months. Zhang Xinfeng, VP of the Ministry, told Xinhua that "the boom of pornographic content on the Internet has contaminated cyberspace and perverted China's young minds." Online pornography remains illegal in China, and external porn web sites are routinely blocked by China's national firewall. The new initiative appears to concentrate mainly on domestic porn production, which may be easier (and faster) for Chinese users to access.